Rally At Alameda County Health Department-No Protection For Workers At Tesla & In Alameda

7/2 Press Conference & Rally At Alameda County Health Department-No Protection For Workers At Tesla & In Alameda County-Same Policy As Trump In Protecting Workers
Elon Musk Is Not Above The Law?

When:
Thursday July 2, 2020 12:00 PM Noon

Where:
Alameda Department of Public Health
1000 Broadway, Oakland

What:
Call To Demand An End To Alameda Department of Public Health Doing Damage Control For Tesla & Other
Employers.
Stop Termination Of Tesla Workers Who Refuse To Return To Work Because Of Health & Safety Concerns For Themselves Or Their Family Members.
Protest ADPH Allowing Tesla and other companies to do tracing instead of public agencies. Transparency NOW!
Demand of Govenor Gavin Newsom to Hire 1,000 Cal-OSHA inspectors
Prosecution of Tesla Owner Elon Musk For Criminal Malfeasance to Cover Up Covid Epidemic in the Fremont Plant
Automatic Workers Compensation For All Workers Who Are Contaminated From Covid While At Work
Protest Use Of Fremont Police By ADPH To Investigate Health and Safety Conditons At Tesla Factory
Shutting Down & Deep Cleaning Sanitation of The Tesla Factory After Every Known Infection
Stop Systemic Racism & Discrimination At Tesla “Black Lives Matter"

Who:
Tesla Workers
Workers Solidarity Action Network
https://www.facebook.com/workerssolidarityactionnetwork/
Nor Cal Dandelion Collective
https://www.facebook.com/norcal.dandelion.collective/
Workers United Against Covid-19
https://www.facebook.com/groups/236533454112331/
United Public Workers For Action
http://www.upwa.info
United Front For A Labor Party
https://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa/
For more information:
info(at)upwa.info

The growing Covid-19 pandemic in California has exposed the failure of the Newsom administration to properly institute public health regulations for the tracing and tracking of the virus spread in the workplace. Part of the reason for this catastropic crisis is the refusal of the Newsom administration to properly staff Cal-OSHA to investigate the workplace from the farms to large factories like Tesla.
There are less than 200 Cal-OSHA inspectors for the 19 million workers of California.
Elon Musk’s management is also terminating workers who are vulnerable or whose family is vulnerable to Covid and are afraid of returning to work.
Governor Gavin Newsom has also refused to use his executive powers to require Cal-OSHA inspectors to investigate and enforce health and safety regulations. Cal-OSHA has told Tesla workers that they are not responsible for enforcing health and safety regulations and instead they should go to the Alameda Department of Public Health.
On June 15 prior to a rally at Tesla, Governor Newsom was questioned and admitted that Cal-OSHA was responsible for protecting the health and safety of California’s over 19 million workers.
We protest the long hiring freeze by Governor Newsom and demand that 1,000 Cal-OSHA Inspectors be hired NOW!

Additional information:

Former OSHA Investigator Garrett Brown has reported the following:
Crisis at Cal/OSHA: Crippling vacancies, no net hiring in six months, 18 months after Gavin Newsom became California Governor
At this point, Cal/OSHA is indistinguishable from Trump’s Fed OSHA in terms of prolonged understaffing, voluntary guidelines over regulatory enforcement, and a very limited number of in-person field inspections.

Cal/OSHA has crippling vacancies in field inspector and leadership positions – in the midst of a continuing pandemic – and there has been no net hiring in all of 2020.

There were 52 vacant field inspector positions in June 2020, for a vacancy rate of 21%. In January 2020, there were 48 vacancies, which rose to 52 in February and has remained constant since then. Democrat Gavin Newsom became Governor in January 2019, but has allowed the state workplace safety agency to twist slowly in the wind while millions of workers are exposed to a surging coronavirus pandemic throughout the state.

Less than a third of the inspectorate are now conducting in-person field enforcement inspections, and there is a backlog of more than 2,000 worker complaints and dozens of employer-reported fatalities, injuries and illnesses. The leadership vacancies have compounded the inability of the agency to respond effectively to either the pandemic or “normal” workplace health and safety hazards.

At this point, Cal/OSHA is indistinguishable from Trump’s Fed OSHA in terms of prolonged understaffing, voluntary guidelines over regulatory enforcement, and a very limited number of in-person field inspections. This is despite the fact that California has an existing, 11-year-old regulation designed precisely to protect health care workers against airborne diseases like COVID-19, and numerous other existing regulations to protect other workers from hazards created by the virus.

The details of Cal/OHSA’s paralysis are as follows:

Inspector vacancies ---
52 Compliance Safety and Health Officer (CSHO) positions are vacant in the 245 CSHO positions for a vacancy rate of 21.2%
Fremont has 7 of 11 CSHO positions vacant (64%)
Santa Ana has 6 of 12 CSHO positions vacant (50%) and no District Manager
San Francisco has 3 of 7 CSHO positions vacant (43%)
Region I (San Francisco Bay Area) has an overall CSHO vacancy rate of 36%
Six CSHO positions have disappeared altogether from the Organization Charts since July 2019

Leadership vacancies ---
There are two vacancies in the six Regional Manager positions: Region III Manager in Santa Ana, and Region VI Manager supervising the High Hazard Unit and Labor Enforcement Task Force (LETF).
There are six District Offices without a District Manager: San Bernardino, Sacramento, Long Beach, LETF/Santa Ana, Santa Ana and Van Nuys.
Region III (San Diego, Santa Ana, San Bernardino) has three of four District Manager positions vacant, and the Regional Manager position is also vacant.
The Mining & Tunneling Unit (Region V) has two of three District Offices with manager vacancies, the training unit manager position is vacant, and the Regional Manager/Principal Safety Engineer position is vacant.

Cal/OSHA has an inspector to worker ratio of one inspector to 99,000 workers – much less health protective than the ratios of Washington State (1 to 25,000) and Oregon (1 to 22,000). California even has fewer workplace health inspectors (193) than the number of California Fish & Game Wardens (250).

In a state where more than an estimated 25% of the 18.5 million workers speak languages other than English, there are only 28 Cal/OSHA field enforcement inspectors certified to speak languages besides English. With no net hiring at Cal/OSHA in 2020, there has been no improvement in the agency’s language capability.

With the vacancy rate for field inspectors at or above 20% for last six months, it is not clear what the Governor is waiting for before implementing a plan to revive and rebuild Cal/OSHA at a time when workplace health and safety issues have become front-page news and a burning concern for millions of Californians.

Garrett Brown
June 26, 2020

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/protecting-workers/FA505DC6-D643-4D68-8F23-780ABCB282F9%40comcast.net.
DOSH Bilingual Pay Sum Chart

Additional media:

Some Tesla factory employees say they’re being coerced and pressured to return to work by Elon Musk
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/13/some-tesla-factory-employees-say-theyre-being-pressured-to-return-to-work.html?ref=hvper.com

A user’s guide to Tesla’s worker safety problems
https://www.revealnews.org/blog/a-users-guide-to-teslas-worker-safety-problems/

Tesla to continue production at Fremont plant for days after shelter in place rule
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Inside-Tesla-s-Fremont-factory-car-production-15143877.php

Workers Comp Fraud: Tesla reportedly failed to tell regulators about dozens of factory injuries, then claimed without evidence that regulators praised its record-keeping
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-injuries-incomplete-records-osha-california-2020-3

Elon Musk's Workers Comp Fraud: How Crooked Tesla and its corrupt doctor made sure injured employees didn’t get workers’ comp
https://www.revealnews.org/article/how-tesla-and-its-doctor-made-sure-injured-employees-didnt-get-workers-comp/?fbclid=IwAR0oyUjcA5sGI0RfBiD6CYrFjuNdsopW6wE1wblKfSGvP207xooxe7rvWQc

Tesla to continue production at Fremont plant for days after shelter in place rule
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Inside-Tesla-s-Fremont-factory-car-production-15143877.php

Tesla reportedly failed to tell regulators about dozens of factory injuries, then claimed without evidence that regulators praised its record-keeping
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-injuries-incomplete-records-osha-california-2020-3

How Tesla and its doctor made sure injured employees didn’t get workers’ comp,
https://www.revealnews.org/article/how-tesla-and-its-doctor-made-sure-injured-employees-didnt-get-workers-comp/?fbclid=IwAR0oyUjcA5sGI0RfBiD6CYrFjuNdsopW6wE1wblKfSGvP207xooxe7rvWQc

Message Sent To Newsom & Top State Officials To Protect CA Workers From Covid-19 on May 19, 2020- Cal-OSHA Hiring Freeze Is Still In Place

Today Worksafe and 70+ labor & community organizations throughout California are sending an urgent message to Governor Newsom & top state officials: Listen to California Workers!

● Achieve Full Staffing of Cal/OSHA
Cal/OSHA is severely under-resourced making it impossible to respond to hundreds of COVID-19 complaints. Their current response via letter inspection leaves many workers vulnerable. Their inspector vacancy rate as of March 2020 is 20.5 percent. We demand Cal/OSHA achieve full staffing immediately. In the interim, Cal/OSHA should work with city and county health inspectors and deputize labor advocates to respond to the complaints.

Please join us on today as we take to social media to share our demands and uplift stories of workers who have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

Read and share our coalition demand letter: http://bit.ly/3e0oMub

Help us boost the message with this social media toolkit: https://bit.ly/2XaG418